Category: Learning/Education

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – A senior Hamas official in Gaza says the territory's militant rulers intend to begin teaching Hebrew for high school students beginning next year. Ziad Thabet, the education ministry undersecretary, said Monday the government is trying to find and train teachers.

For the first time in the history of the Russian Armed forces the All-army Olympiad on foreign languages among cadets of military universities is being held in the Moscow Military University on April 18-21. In the course of the military education reform, the number of hours assigned on the study of foreign languages, has considerably increased.

Every year since 2007, the College Board and Asia Society have joined forces to host the annual National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC). Today it has grown to become the largest conference of its kind in North America, and it has become one of the premier forums for sharing ideas and best practices related to Chinese language and culture education.

Almost all young Czechs know some English now compared with the early 1990s and the latest experience shows that the knowledge of one more foreign language is an advantage on the job market, depending on business trends that now put emphasis on Spanish, Russian and Chinese, daily Pravo writes Friday.

A new American Indian language app hit the iTunes store January 20 that features translations of animal names from English to Diné, Lakota, Mvskoke and Ponca. The menu screen offers a choice of four languages. Once a language is chosen, a short list of animals appears from which to choose.

Beijing Foreign Studies University was approved by the Ministry of Education in 2005 to start its Icelandic program three years later. It is still the only university in China that has such a program. Zhang Yuchong, 23, who is also studying Icelandic, said he is worried about his career prospects after graduation. "But I don't regret studying Icelandic as my major," he said. "It has opened a door for me to a unique culture, and I love it."

Lifehacker reader Gabriel Wyner was tasked with learning four languages in the past few years for his career as an opera singer, and in the process landed on "a pretty damn good method for language learning that you can do in limited amounts of spare time." Here's the four-step method that you can use, too (and you don't have to invest hundreds in a language course like Rosetta Stone).

Like the majority of Tanzanians, these students were taught in the Kiswahili language throughout seven years of primary school. But moving to secondary school means an abrupt shift to learning all subjects in English, which many educators, students and parents say affects how much learning actually takes place.

Columbia is one of only two Ivy League schools, along with Princeton, that does not offer a linguistics major, although undergraduate interest in the field has been growing. Columbia’s program has been suspended since 1991, but students can petition for an independent major in linguistics or graduate with a special concentration in the discipline.

In mainstream Pakistan, the linguistic diversity of the country is still thought to be a threat to the national cohesion despite the fact that Pakistan has lost one of its arms mainly (including other factors as well) due to the denial of linguistic diversity.

...one thing that the University of Minnesota’s French department is beginning to implement into their curriculum is interactive Skype exchanges with students from France. It is a new practice, so there are still some kinks to be worked out. But every student from my French 1004 class is currently paired up with a student at a university in France...

The default policy in California schools immerses students in English without building on what they’ve learned in their native languages. At the same time, a growing body of research underscores the benefits of speaking two or more languages early in life.

“We were looking at a different way to package a language course,” said Fanara. “One of the best ways is to create an environment for people where they can only speak English. They are forced to speak the language they are learning.” The school is only for adults and takes its students on a tour around Ireland to listen to and speak with different accents.

When Mika was born, my husband and I decided that we wanted her to be bilingual. My husband’s parents are Israeli immigrants, and he was born in this country shortly after they arrived. Until he went to school, Hebrew was his only language. (My Hebrew is limited to what I learned in Hebrew school, which, unfortunately, wasn’t much.)

Developments in social science, global trends and demographics all reinforce the significant benefits of bilingual education. Despite that, American schools show a steady decline in language programs. How can this be?

In language study, students learn far more than is being taught. With skill-based training as a launchpad, they get a glimpse of life within a different cultural framework, experiencing affinity with unfamiliar worlds — and people. In Japanese, for example, we express respect or appreciation to others as an ingrained and important part of communication.

The sound of Norfolk dialect has been troshing around the tearbles of a school room. But the “larnin” about mawkins, dickeys and squit has not been among the fields and flint buildings of the language’s homeland. It has been amid palm trees and skyscrapers 3000 miles away in Saudi Arabia.

“In the U.S., German is on the defensive,” they conclude in a new study that could serve as a blueprint for other languages threatened by tectonic shifts in American demographics. “It is under increasing attack from many directions and for many different reasons.”

The government is prepared to consider the teaching of Punjabi language in schools if there is a request for it and that there are enough students for the lesson, said Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

Baxter originally recorded about 140 words or phrases for the app but has only made about 70 phrases available so far. “Over the next couple of weeks we will be loading up 300 to 400 words and phrases along with objects and a lot more syllabics,” Baxter said. “So it’s going to be a pretty intense tool, and of course we are developing it further so this could be the model for language curriculum, not only in Ontario, but throughout Ontario, Manitoba and the United States.”

Nova Scotians interested in improving their understanding and use of the Gaelic language will be able to further their study with a new bursary program funded by the government of Scotland and administered by Gaelic Affairs.

Mrs Phumjit said the need for people who are able to speak Thai in Cambodia has been increasing with growing investment, the expansion of the country's tourism industry and closer Thai-Cambodian relations. She said this need will continue for the foreseeable future. Cambodian students with Thai language skills are still able to apply for various jobs with Thai employers in Phnom Penh and other cities in Cambodia.

MY FIRST experience of trilingual children was living in Sri Lanka in 2005, where many of the kids I met spoke Tamil, Sinhala and English. I was astounded when I realised that they could also read and write in these languages, a feat requiring knowledge of three completely different scripts – the Roman alphabet, Tamil script with more than 200 letters, and Sinhalese which has more than 50 characters.

English is the second official language of India, bequeathed by British colonisation. And yet, Indians are not considered "native English speakers", as those competing for English language teaching jobs have found. It would be easy to label this as racism but the prejudice is a combination of ignorance and the sometimes poor reputation of the Indian education system.

ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Language Arts teachers have been urged to promote the use of standard English during school hours, as the Ministry of Education makes a bid to further improve performance in that subject area.

Our failure to provide language learning resources must partly be due to teachers and parents who either don't appreciate or don't understand the power of social media. But by ignoring social media we are missing out on a world of opportunities.

The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council (OCAO) will cooperate with foreign education authorities to position Chinese-language education as a mainstream education choice abroad, said Li Haifeng, the OCAO director, at a meeting attended by overseas Chinese social organizations from across the world.

...In his words, Armenia’s current education system does not teach a necessary amount of Russian language to the children. At the same time, however, the Communists demand that the teaching level of Armenian—the country’s official language—be raised in schools.